A powerful play about brotherly love, Tarell Alvin McCraney’s 2007 drama “The Brothers Size” is set in an auto shop, and that’s just where new company Ubuntu Theater Project is performing it. The show is staged in the small backyard of Dana Meyer Auto Care in Albany, surrounded by piles of tires, lending the proceedings both verisimilitude and a wonderfully resonant immediacy.

Now in its third year, Ubuntu is in the middle of an ambitious Summer Theatre Festival featuring four plays staged back to back in nontraditional venues around the East Bay. In July, Ubuntu performed Marcus Gardley’s “Dance of the Holy Ghosts” at Oakland City Church. Set for Aug. 13-15 is a production of “Grounded,” George Brant’s one-woman show about a drone pilot, inside an airplane hangar at the Oakland Aviation Museum. In early September, Ubuntu stages “Waiting for Lefty,” Clifford Odets’ 1935 drama about cab drivers planning a strike, at Classic Cars West in Oakland. To increase accessibility to all audiences, tickets at the door are pay-what-you-can.

“The Brothers Size” is the second play in McCraney’s trilogy “The Brother/Sister Plays,” which three major Bay Area companies — Marin Theatre Company, Magic Theatre and American Conservatory Theater — teamed up to present in 2010 as a stunning introduction to the work of the young African-American playwright, who was then not yet 30. So far, 2015 has been another great year for McCraney’s work in the Bay Area, with this production following not long after Marin Theatre Company’s Bay Area premiere of “Choir Boy” and the West Coast premiere of “Head of Passes” at Berkeley Repertory Theatre.

Two of the three characters in “The Brothers Size” also appear in the first play in the “Brother/Sister” trilogy, “In the Red and Brown Water,” and there’s a little discussion of characters from the other play, but you don’t have to be familiar with any of that to appreciate this story.

Oshoosi Size (a charming, playful Terrance White) is recently out of prison and staying with his elder brother Ogun (Deleon Dallas, stern and thoughtful). Ogun is always sternly chiding Oshoosi to work and stay out of trouble, but all the younger brother wants to do is drive around, pick up women and hang out with his prison buddy Elegba (William H.P. in a soulful, yearning portrayal), who’s downright doting in his devotion to his friend. And somewhere out there, unseen, there’s a police officer just waiting for them to slip up.

The story is relatively uneventful, much more focused on relationships than on plot, but the intimate bare-bones staging directed by Keith Wallace drives home the intense feelings behind the story to haunting effect, even more so than in the show’s higher-profile West Coast premiere at the Magic five years ago.

The cast and creative team strike a perfect balance between the stylization in the script — characters narrating their own stage directions, poetic dream sequences — and the down-to-earth humor and camaraderie of family and friends when they’re just hanging out. The actors sing some beautiful a cappella renditions of spirituals and R&B numbers, sometimes echoed by disembodied humming in Steven Leffue’s sound design. It’s an eloquent, funny and achingly poignant show that’s a forceful testament to the power of theater in such a humble setting.

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